Mesmerizing timelapse video shows low-lying clouds roll across Pikes Peak in central Colorado on Wednesday morning. (Credit: @PB3III via Storyful)
An active weather pattern is setting up across the Rockies and the Plains, bringing a multi-day threat of thunderstorms, large hail and damaging winds for the upcoming week.
The primary source behind the multi-day threat is a collision of atmospheric ingredients.
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Hot, humid air pushing northward from the Gulf of America is providing plenty of moisture, while fast, energetic winds blowing overhead from west to east across the mountains are creating the spin needed to organize clouds into intense, rotating storms, according to the FOX Forecast Center.
(FOX Weather)
Monday will be the highest risk, focused across the central and northern High Plains, particularly Wyoming, western Nebraska and northeast Colorado.
Widely scattered, but intense storms are likely to form in the afternoon.
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Because the upper-level winds are so strong, a few of these storms could become powerful thunderstorms, resulting in large to very large hail and sudden, damaging wind gusts.
The threat extends from southeast Montana all the way down to the Texas–Oklahoma panhandles, the FOX Forecast Center said.
(FOX Weather)
By Tuesday, the greatest threat will be more confined and hone in on eastern Colorado and western Kansas.
While stores will start as individual, rotating cells in the afternoon, they are expected to merge into a massive, organized cluster as they push eastward into the evening.
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On Wednesday and Thursday, the severe threat settles into a highly localized pattern along the higher-elevation prairies of eastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.
(FOX Weather)
A large high pressure to the north will act as a giant fan, pushing air from east to west right back up against the Rocky Mountains.
This persistent “upslope” flow keeps a narrow corridor right next to the mountains highly unstable, meaning both Wednesday and Thursday afternoon will feature a repeated threat of strong storms capable of dropping large hail.
The series of storms are not one massive, continuous storm, but rather a multi-day window where the atmosphere is primed to produce severe weather each afternoon and evening.
